Toronto Municipal Employees’ Strike
It is not usually the wish of workers that strikes happen during the time they serve as employees of various institutions. Most strikes have reasons that compel them to happen, though, depending on the results likely, members of public may or may not back it. In this case, the Toronto Municipal Council employees went on strike to go up against the metropolis comprehensive allowance demands. Though the public was annoyed by both the authorities and the employees union, they seemed to be entirely against the strike. Controversy arose from the fact that the metropolis was in financial constrain but the employees could not consider that; they wanted their demands met.
This strike which incorporates both official and casual workers has had a great impact on the operations of the municipal council of Toronto (Roberts, n.d). The disruption has caused noteworthy effects such as termination of waste collection. Over fifty infant-care centers and swimming pools which are normally run by the metropolis have been shut down. Leisure services have also been affected alongside other municipal services. According to Politics: Students Affected By Toronto Municipal Strike (2009) students who used to get municipal jobs to sustain themselves have also had to look out for other ways to sustain themselves financially. Mark Ferguson who represents workers who do their job outside the council was of the opinion that the municipal authorities deliberately triggered the strike. According to him, the council has been uncooperative throughout in the negotiations.
Ann Dembinski has been accused of taking advantage of the downturn to tear the agreement apart. The metropolis is alleged to be in the process of collecting an altercation with City personnel. The city has presented people to be involved in the negotiations for the local laborers and their plot is to ignore the precedence in drafting working tasks and when laying plans of dismissing away workers.
The two parts have been negotiating for over six months and the city did not even give an offer of the new wages it can pay despite the fact that during the negotiation, it was less than three hours to the time that the strike was scheduled to happen. This particular offer has not been well spoken of but the fact is it is way below the expected standards of annual earnings increment that applies to other Ontarian public service laborers.
David Miller who is the Mayor has used the excuse of change to elaborate the reason as to why the municipal cannot meet the demands of their laborers (Rowley, 2009). He once pointed out that the city has no enough funds since it is in a financial crisis of some kind. Miller also pointed out a possibility of turning to the Federal Government if need be so that a law barring the strike from continuing is imposed while an obligatory mediation is put in place to solve the issue once and for all.
Processing your request, Please wait....
